Dragon Master Read online

  I picked up the other paper scrap and squinted as I deciphered the messily scrawled block letters. “KAMELIA - FIRST SHIFT.” I showed it to Boe and he laughed out loud and showed me the other scrap. “KAMELIA - SECOND SHIFT.” We’d both been assigned to Kamelia’s Watch, each of us for twelve hours, back to back. This was going to be interesting! We traded our assignments back so that I had the second shift and Boe had the first shift again.

  We noticed that Commander Hawk was speaking again, and we tried to stand at attention.

  “… Solemn duty. Get your rest tonight so that you are not tempted to fall asleep during your Watch. The consequences would be—” he paused and looked each of us in the eyes before continuing. “Most. Dire.”

  ***

  Back in the bunk, Boe and I couldn’t sleep.

  “Do you think she’ll need to bathe? She’ll want to bathe before the ceremony.” I couldn’t help myself, I was daydreaming out loud.

  “They do have private chambers with chamber maids to continue the Watch for that sort of thing you know,” Boe corrected me, shattering my latest vision. “The last thing they would want to do is tempt the Stone Soul to break his Watch vow by making him watch his charge bathe!” It made sense, but I didn’t have to like it.

  “Well, I don’t think I’ll be able to help myself while I’m in there. You know she wants me,” I said. “After she watched me win my battle I’m sure she’s been dreaming of having me up there for her Watch.” Okay, so I was already off daydreaming out loud again. But so what?

  “Oh, sure,” Boe laughed, “she’s been plotting and planning to get some alone time with you so that you can plan to run off together and live as outsiders.”

  I laughed too, only a little nervously at the mention of running away. I was too aware that the fun and games of the festival would end in three more weeks and then the stone reality of training and having to go on a dragon quest and probably dying a gory death would still be there. I was slowly starting to consider making that plan to run away, though not with any enthusiasm. I figured the planning could wait at least another week. In the meantime, I’d just enjoy myself. Especially tomorrow night.

  If it would just get here.

  ***

  “Oh no, not you too.” I could hear the pout in Kamelia’s voice.

  I looked up from staring at my boots to see her looking straight at me with big brown eyes. Her eyelashes were supernaturally long, and curled in a perfect arc. Sure enough, her painted pink lips were twisted into a cutesy pout.

  There was no actual rule against talking to your charge as a Watch, though I didn’t imagine that many wives and Stone Souls had much in common to talk about. Still, I’d been in the room for two hours and nobody had said a word to anyone else. Before Kamelia spoke up, I hadn’t heard a human voice except for whatever the two veteran Stone Soul Watchers grunted at each other during the shift change. I hadn’t even said anything to Boe as he left the chambers and I entered, we just walked past each other, each in a daze. This wasn’t what I’d imagined. In truth, until Kamelia spoke I’d failed to work up the nerve to really look at her, and that was the one and only thing I was supposed to be doing.

  She was still looking at me, expectantly.

  “You know, your friend just stood there for hours, from the moment I woke up right until he left. When you came in,” her pout transformed into a smile and my knees buckled, “I thought things were going to get more interesting.”

  I looked to the veteran Stone Soul for moral support, but he didn’t say anything, just stood with his back to the inner door of the Stoneflame Watch tower and stared toward Kamelia blankly. How did he do it? In my peripheral vision, I saw Kamelia coming toward me slowly. I quickly started studying the ornate framework of her four post bed.

  Seeing that I was intent on ignoring her, she threw her arms up and dropped into one of the dozens of frilly colorful cushions that dotted the room like windswept fallowblossoms during Late Flame. Something about the scene made me crack a smile and I inadvertently blurted out a small yelp of a giggle, which I immediately tried to conceal by bursting into a coughing fit. Smooth. I glanced back at Kamelia and saw that she wasn’t buying it. I gathered up all my courage, I wanted to say something, anything.

  Nothing came out. At least I was looking at her now.

  Kamelia tried again. “You do know that you’re allowed to speak, right? This man isn’t going to cut off your head if you just have a conversation with me.” She indicated the other Watcher, and the loose shoulder of her garment shrugged off her with the gesture. She didn’t make any effort to replace it.

  If I hadn’t already been blushing, I turned Flame red right then. I was far too embarrassed even to make an effort to look away.

  “Why don’t I just come over and sit next to you, would that make you more comfortable?”

  No, that certainly would not make me more comfortable. I didn’t answer.

  Kamelia got up and walked toward me, pulling her sleeve back up and hiding the smooth, pearl flesh of her shoulder. That helped make me a little more comfortable. Just a little. She walked past me and I noticed that I’d stopped breathing. I forced myself to breathe out, and then breathe in. I inhaled the intoxicating scent of vanilla blossoms. Kamelia dragged two cushions over to me and set them side by side, then lowered herself into one of them. Her eyes were large and round as she looked up at me, expectantly.

  “I—” I started, my voice sounding broken and so squeaky. I coughed and tried again, “I think I will be okay to stand here.” I had such a way with words.

  She laughed, a genuine, carefree laugh, and I started to laugh too, nervously at first, and then for real. She stopped, and I forced myself to stop laughing as well.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Caedan, miss. Caedan Jade.”

  “Now that’s a name for Stone Soul,” she said. I still couldn’t get over the fact that she was talking. To me.

  “Do you have brothers or sisters?”

  “No, miss,” I said. I was really getting into this talking thing. Words were just spilling out now.

  “So you’re the only hope for your family, then? The Stone Soul boy hoping to become a Dragon Master man.”

  Ouch. I winced, even though there was no malice in her voice. Or maybe because there was nothing like malice there. That was how she saw me then? In a few months I’d be on a dragon quest, sent to the front lines to confront the dragon menace. I was expected to lay down my life in defense of the Realm. And yet she still saw me as just a boy? Well why did she keep coming over to watch us train if we were just a bunch of boys to her?

  I guess she noticed that I was growing angry.

  “You’re the Stone Soul who won his battle with the Tournament combatant.”

  She didn’t ask, she knew. She had been watching after all! Yet she still called me a boy.

  “Some of my chamber maids saw the whole thing, talked about it for an hour,” she explained, studying my face.

  I looked back at my boots. “It was nothing.” Yeah, right. “I got lucky, I guess.”

  “Well,” she said, “you get lucky when you face your first dragon, okay?”

  She raised a long thin arm and held out her hand for me to help her to her feet. I hesitated for a moment, then took her hand and and pulled her to her feet, maybe a little too roughly. Her skin was soft and warm. I tried to look away from her, but caught her giving me one more smile as she walked away toward her bed.

  I melted, my anger forgotten.

  ***

  I slept like a stone the night of the Watch. My shift hadn’t ended until midnight, and the last two hours of the shift had simply involved watching Kamelia sleep. I caught myself almost drifting off to sleep twice, but memories of Commander Hawk’s “most dire” warning snapped me awake each time. I’d rushed back to my bunk after the Watch ended and found Boe already fast asleep.

  A
nd then Boe was rousing me awake. I’d expected that thoughts of Kamelia would have kept up all night, but I hadn’t even dreamt of Kamelia, at least not that I remembered. I couldn’t remember having any dreams at all.

  “It’s the Stoneflame!” Boe was saying, “C’mon get ready already!” Sure, and how many hours ago did Boe get to sleep? Still, I noticed from the angle of the light streaming through the only window in the bunk that it was already late in the morning. That explained Boe’s panic: the Stoneflame couldn’t be more than an hour away.

  The Watch would be stationed outside Kamelia’s doors for the rest of the day, rather than inside. I tried not to think about Master Walker who would be the one inside with Kamelia.

  We met Boe’s family at the training grounds, and they quickly waved us over to our seats. There was a new girl sitting with Daija on the end of the bench, and she was talking in a hushed whisper. She kept glancing up at Boe and me as we took our seats, but she suddenly got very still and quiet when the bench started to magically rise. I was used to it by this point, but I watched as the girl made an obvious effort not to get sick. Boe reached over and put a hand over hers and that seemed to relax her. Once we were in place, Boe let go of the girl and introduced her to me as Laciann, from his neighborhood in Chialaa Valley. She smiled and shook my hand, and then went back to telling Daija her story. Daija looked over at me and lifted her hand in greeting with a sheepish smile on her face. I waved and nodded at her. Why not? I was in a good mood.

  Everyone was in a good mood. We were excited for the Stoneflame.

  The sky began to change color. It was so gradual that at first I wasn’t sure if I was seeing it, but with the change the crowd shifted to hushed tones and then complete silence. It had been a mostly clear blue sky, with only a few huge puffy clouds accenting the horizon. It was definitely more of a purple hue now, and the white clouds were turning orange and then shades of red, as if they were catching fire. From the next bench over, a four-year old Stone Soul recruit cried out with an eep of delight which was followed by a chorus of hushing from the adults around him. The sky continued to darken and shift from purple to a crimson red. People were pointing up toward the sun and I looked up to see that the sun was no longer visible. Where he should have been, Flame loomed, reigning supreme. She was ringed by impressive flares that radiated and curled out from around her. Though she usually glowed like an ember in the night sky, she appeared dark as blackwood at her core in contrast to the brightly lit circle of fire that she was now casting out.

  I looked around me. This was my third Stoneflame, and I had some idea what to expect. Still, it had been five years between each one and I was noticing new details this time around. The clouds weren’t a steady red color, but instead kept pulsing and cycling through various fiery hues. The circle of fire around Flame wasn’t uniformly lit, and as I stared up at her I could see subtle shifts in color and brightness. This was far more impressive than any light show a wizard could produce, and even the wild beasts and birds of the forests seemed to fall silent in wonder. I thought again of Kamelia in the Watch tower, hoped that she was seeing this, hoped that Master Walker wasn’t actually in her chambers at this very moment.

  The silence was broken by a uniform gasp from the gathered crowd as a shooting star erupted across the maroon sky, its bright green tail brilliantly defying Flame’s attempt to consume everything in the light of her fire. It burned out after a moment. Where the green trail had been my eyes now traced an unnaturally red afterglow in the sky, as if Flame were getting revenge for her stolen spotlight.

  Boe released a barely audible gasp that sounded like “woah.”

  I just watched inaudibly with my mouth open. The shooting star was something that I’d never experienced before, and from the mutterings of the crowd around me I gathered that they hadn’t been expecting it either. For the next couple minutes as I stared at Flame, I wondered what the shooting star could mean. Slowly and eventually, though, I forgot about it. We were silent again. Flame still had us all rapt in her magnificent dance.

  I looked away as the blinding light of the sun suddenly shone out from behind Flame. We had been warned that watching this part of the Stoneflame could leave us permanently blind, and I didn’t want to take that risk. I looked around at the crowd again. Daija was also looking around, though thankfully not in my direction, Laciann was examining her fingernails in the returning light, and Boe was still staring up at Flame. I gave him a jab with my elbow and he tore his gaze away. I looked down at the ground for the first time and noticed that our shadows were unnaturally crisp, as if there were these people made of shadows gathered on the ground beneath us. It was unnerving. For a moment I began to imagine that the shadow people might be connected to the green shooting star, but Boe leaned over to say something to Laciann and his voice broke me out of my trance. I stole one last look at Flame, almost invisible now as the sun retook his rightful place as ruler of the daytime skies.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Final Night

  Boe, Daija, Laciann and I began doing everything together at the festival. We attended most of the shows, challenged each other in the carnival games, and even had an ill-fated competition to see who could eat the most exotic foods and keep them down. I came to decide that Daija wasn’t so bad now that she had her friend with her and so she wasn’t always … looking at me. Laciann was fun to be around, and she obviously had a thing for Boe, but he seemed to be oblivious and I decided not to bring it up if he wasn’t going to bring it up. And anyway, he’d stopped teasing me about Daija and I was afraid that if I brought up Laciann like that then he’d start up with the Caedan and Daija stuff.

  Weeks passed far too quickly and it was already the last afternoon of the Stoneflame festival. Tomorrow morning, Boe’s family would have to leave with Laciann, and Boe and I would be thrust into our final months of training. The night of the Stoneflame, Commander Hawk had gathered the Stone Souls and assured us that those would be the most intense months of training and had even encouraged us to get plenty of rest and “to get the fun out of our systems” during the festival. We’d been taking that advice.

  “We still haven’t gone for the ride on the magic log,” said Laciann.

  We’d spent a good chunk of each of our days arguing over what we should do next. Now that the festival was ending and we’d done everything I’d wanted, I was prepared to agree to anything.

  “That’s for the children,” Daija said. Apparently she didn’t feel the same way I did.

  “It could be fun,” I offered.

  “Actually,” corrected Boe, “they’re changing the ride for the final night of the festival. I hear that once it gets dark out, the ride will be something really scary.”

  “So let’s do that tonight after sunset,” I said.

  “The line is going to be outrageous then,” protested Daija.

  Laciann suggested that we could head to the line now and that we’d take turns waiting there to save our places. After some more discussion, we finally agreed to the plan and strolled over to the line. Word had apparently gotten around about the change to the show because the line was as long as it had been since the first day of the festival. I spotted many of the young men from training class waiting in the line; some were standing with their families, others had girls on their arms. Bayrd and Gable were standing in the front of the line, surrounded by a whole group of girls, most of them obviously from distant parts of the Realm.

  We still didn’t have a plan for those who weren’t going to be stuck waiting in line. I asked Boe what he wanted to do.

  “I need to take another crack at that shooting gallery. I think I’ve finally figured out the trick to the arrows they’re using,” he said. I could have guessed. We’d been to the shooting gallery twice a day for the past week at Boe’s insistence. Daija had earned the top prize stamp on her second try, and I’d earned mine on our first attempt the next day. Even Laciann had gotten the runner-up prize st
amp late yesterday, but Boe was still stuck with the consolation prize stamp and it was obviously gnawing at him.

  “That sounds like fun,” Laciann said.

  “Well, you two go ahead and do that then,” I offered. Too late I realized that I was suggesting that they leave Daija and I alone together to save our spot in line. I looked at her and blushed.

  Laciann didn’t wait for Boe to respond, she just beamed and grabbed his hand, then started skipping away to the games section of the festival. Boe shrugged at us before picking up his pace to avoid being literally dragged away by Laciann.

  “So what’s their story, exactly?” I asked Daija before we could get stuck in an awkward silence.

  “She’s lived in our town since we were little. She’s always had kind of a crush on Boe, ever since she found out that he was a Stone Soul,” she shook her head, “she’s so sure that he’s going to kill a dragon and then take her as his only bride. Sometimes I think she’s planned her whole life around it.”

  “Wow.” I said, and I meant it. That was a conviction I hadn’t had about anything in my whole life, as far as I could remember.

  “Tell me about it,” Daija said, rolling her eyes. She seemed like she was about to say something else but cut herself off and just shrugged instead, then ran her fingers through her auburn bangs. I decided that Kamelia should grow out her bangs, that it would make her look younger. Then I thought of Kamelia being still up in the Stoneflame Watch tower, possibly with child. Or possibly with the next dragon growing inside of her. Then I didn’t want to think about Kamelia anymore.

  Things were starting to reach that awkward silence stage.

  “So what is it like being Boe’s twin sister?”

  She raised her eyebrows at me, and I saw the green sparkle in her eyes. It reminded me of the green shooting star from the Stoneflame. “It’s just,” she stammered, “I don’t know.” She shrugged again. “Boe’s just… Boe.”